In The Architect’s Newspaper (AN)’s inaugural Best of Design Awards in 2013, we featured six categories. The next year, in 2014, we increased to nine categories and then to 18 categories in 2015. This year, for the 4th Best of Design Awards, we’ve expanded to 26 exciting categories.
We are also thrilled to be able to publish the 4th Best of Design Awards winners and honorable mentions in a new, stand-alone publication. It’s a sign of our commitment to giving outstanding projects and their creators the credit they deserve. The coverage is now being published on our site (stay tuned as they go online!) and across our social media platforms—totaling over one million viewers!
The competition’s expansion is based on AN’s continued growth. The Best of Design Awards continues to be a unique project-based awards program that showcases great buildings and building elements, interiors, landscapes, lighting, student work, unbuilt work, and much, much more. When we launched AN Interior in 2015, it was clear that we needed to diversify our Interior category, increasing it to include not only residential and public projects, but also, workplace, hospitality, and retail. And, after our website redesign this year, we were able to keep an eye on what subjects our readers responded to the most and added categories based on those findings.
We also rely on the panel of judges we invite to critically review each entry. They, too, have a major effect on the Best of Design Awards’ categories. Last year the judges made suggestions to branch out our coverage and this year’s jury also had some immediate feedback (You’ll find that we gave awards to 27 categories this year—one more category than originally publicized. Our panel felt that due to the strength and variety of submissions in the Adaptive Reuse category, it should be separated into Adaptive Reuse and Adaptive Restoration).
As in years past, the Best of Design jury members were picked for their expertise and high regard in the design community and included Erik Verboon, Claire Weisz, Karen Stonely, Christopher Leong, Adrianne Weremchuk, and AN’s Matt Shaw. They gathered in a Manhattan loft to discuss the merits of each submission and based their judgments on evidence of innovation, creative use of new technology, sustainability, strength of presentation, and, most importantly, great design.
We want to thank everyone for their continued support and eagerness to submit their work to the Best of Design Awards. We are already looking forward to growing next year’s coverage for you.
